---
title: 'In the News: October 27, 2026 (Midday)'
description: 'A Borehole count of 984 open-source projects finds AI agents co-authored commits in 686 of 874 projects in 2026, up from 3 in 2023.'
canonical_url: 'https://darkfactory.dev/news/2026-10-27-midday'
markdown_url: 'https://darkfactory.dev/news/2026-10-27-midday.md'
collection: news
date_published: '2026-10-27T13:15:00-04:00'
date_modified: '2026-10-27T13:15:00-04:00'
---

# In the News: October 27, 2026 (Midday)


One item this cycle. A dataset of open-source commit histories puts numbers on how fast agents began signing commits, and on how little that tracks with what projects say about AI in their contribution rules.

## 1. 686 of 874 open-source projects now show AI-declared commits, but most of them state no policy

**[AI co-authors across 984 open-source projects](https://borehole.dev/data/ai-policies)** · Borehole · Data page counted October 27, 2026 (posted to Hacker News the same day, 1 point at about 19 minutes)

Borehole, a code-diligence service, reads each project's commit history for commits that name an AI agent as co-author, and reads its contributing guide, pull-request template and agent instructions for a stated policy. Of the projects with enough 2026 commits to measure, 686 of 874 have at least one AI-declared commit, against 403 of 871 in 2025, 41 of 855 in 2024 and 3 of 839 in 2023. The average share of commits carrying a declaration was 8.9% in 2026 and 1.2% in 2025, and 96 projects declare one on a quarter or more of their commits. For the 61 projects that began in 2025 or later, the median share of 2026 commits is 8.2%; for the 69 that began before 2010, it is under 1%.

Policy and practice diverge. Of the 984 projects, 249 state a policy and 737 have AI-declared commits; 206 do both. That leaves 531 projects with declared AI commits and no stated policy, 43 with a policy and no declared commits, and 204 with neither. Among projects that declare any, the median declared share is under 1%. Claude appears as a co-author in 655 projects, GitHub Copilot in 470 and Cursor in 273.

The counts have limits Borehole states itself. A declaration is a co-author line the contributor chose to keep, a rebase can remove it, and undeclared AI use is invisible to the count. The library is also Borehole's own selection of 984 projects, and it says the counts move as the library grows. We have not checked the numbers against the repositories.

**Why it matters:** The 8.9% is a floor on declared use, not a measure of use. Two things follow for anyone depending on or contributing to open-source code. A project's contribution policy does not predict whether agent-written commits are landing in it, since most projects with declared AI commits have no policy at all. And the declaration habit is concentrated in newer projects, so older, widely depended-on codebases will look low on this measure whatever their real practice is.